Emergency Procedures
by Nomad1
Summary: Reed notices Victor behaving oddly during a fire drill at ESU. Of course, when isn't Victor behaving oddly? Reed/Victor


**Notes** : Written for chiaroscuros for Yuletide 2018.

 **Emergency Procedures**

Reed knew it was almost a statistical certainty that the fire alarm was either a drill or a false alarm, but he still cast a few worried glances towards the building behind them as they made their way out onto the grass. He'd been on the verge of a breakthrough before Ben had come and dragged him back to the dorms last night, and he didn't want all that work going up in smoke before he had a chance to finish his calculations.

"Relax, big brain, your equations will still be there to cuddle in the morning," Ben said. "Unlike my poor tootsies if we stay out here much longer." He stamped his feet and tucked his hands under his arms. "Geez Louise, a guy could grow icicles."

Reed had to admit it wasn't really the sort of weather to be outside in their sleepwear. He'd grabbed a jacket and pulled his shoes on before leaving the dorm, but his feet were bare inside them, and he was conscious of his thin pyjama pants in the chill wind. At least it was dark enough that most people probably wouldn't notice his state of undress.

Of course, nobody else was too much better off considering the alarm had gone off at five o'clock in the morning. A pair of shivering girls were sitting huddled on the ground with their coats pulled down to cover their bare legs, and Victor von Doom didn't even have a shirt on.

Not that the cold seemed to bother him. He wasn't even moving around to try to keep warm, just standing there scowling with his arms folded. Reed knew from his research that Latveria experienced severe winters, but even so he was pretty sure most people there wouldn't hang around outdoors wearing nothing but green silk pyjama pants. That was probably just Victor.

Did he even have goosebumps?

"Yo, brainwave." Ben slapped him on the shoulder and Reed jumped. "Gonna speak to a coupla guys from the team about rescheduling practice tomorrow. I can't go deprivin' the many admirers of this famously handsome mug by skimping on the beauty sleep."

"Okay." Reed was still watching Victor. The fire alarms hadn't stopped shrilling, but all the same he'd apparently decided he'd had enough of standing around the cold, and now he was heading back towards the dorms. It was hard to call that kind of impatient stride 'sneaking', but he definitely wasn't supposed to be going back inside yet.

So naturally of course Reed followed him.

The ongoing howl of the alarms had a kind of muffling effect, his brain doing its best to filter out the repetitive sound. He absently brainstormed ways of modifying the alarms to better maintain a sense of urgency - cyclical variations in pitch, perhaps with an element of randomisation? - as he tailed Victor up the stairs. It seemed better to keep a safe distance, even with all the noise; Victor was hyper-alert to the point of paranoia when it came to people around him.

Rumour had it he'd even gotten the college authorities to agree to let him set up a private lab off his dorm room. Reed supposed it was possible he could have secured the same arrangement himself if he'd tried, but why would he want to? He was always more than happy to collaborate on any of his scientific projects - if anything, his main problem was finding lab partners who could keep up with him. He wished he could convince Victor to give teamwork a try. Didn't he realise how much more they could achieve if they worked together?

He reached their floor of the dorms. Victor had already disappeared ahead of him, but he surely had to be heading back to his own bedroom. The real question was why? He couldn't possibly be hoping to go back to sleep with the alarms still going on. Maybe he'd been interrupted in the middle of some kind of time-sensitive experiment? He'd been dressed for bed, but Reed was very familiar with flashes of inspiration in the middle of the night, and Victor didn't have a roommate to worry about disturbing.

If it was something that had to be dealt with urgently, he might welcome the assistance of another pair of hands. Reed hurried on, hoping he might at least be allowed a glimpse of Victor's private workshop. He pushed on through the double doors-

And a pair of hands grabbed him and slammed him up against the wall.

"Richards!" Victor's glare was doubly intense when viewed from such close range. "I should have known you would take this opportunity to spy on my work. Or is it sabotage that you have on your infantile mind?" He made no move to let Reed go, and Reed couldn't quite figure out where it was safe to put his hands to push him away. Victor could be touchy about invasions of his personal space at the best of times, never mind when he was half-naked - though he didn't seem to be half so bothered about invading Reed's.

Reed offered him a hopeful smile. "I was just wondering why you were heading back inside while the alarms were still going," he said. "I thought you might need help packing up one of your experiments."

For some reason that response only seemed to irritate Victor further, his eyebrows lowering like looming thunderclouds. "The day I need your help, Richards-"

He broke off, head snapping up, as some sound seemed to catch his attention even over the howling alarms. He whipped around to look back at the stairs, and then lunged off in the direction of his dorm room, dragging Reed along with him. "Get out!" he ordered as they reached the side turn for his room, shoving Reed on towards the second staircase at the other end. "I have no time to deal with your moronic wittering right now."

Instead, Reed turned and looked back towards the stairwell they'd come from, seeing the vague outline of people approaching through the safety glass in the doors. "If they're clearing the building, then we really ought to-"

Victor gave up on making him leave and bundled him into the side passage with a frustrated hiss. "You fool! Do you think they're truly fire safety officials? Your government is seeking to steal my research so they can claim it as their own. If they realise that I've seen through this feeble ruse they will take more overt steps to seize control."

Reed really thought Victor ought to see someone about his paranoid tendencies. It surely had to be miserable to go through life regarding everyone around with constant suspicion. However, he'd learned that recommendations to seek psychotherapy were seldom well-received in spite of the statistics he could cite about effectiveness. "Look, Victor, I'm sure if we just explain that you were concerned about an unstable experiment..."

He turned towards the main hallway, but Victor yanked him back again, pinning him against the door to the dorm room. "You-" As the sound of footsteps arrived right outside the passageway an expression flashed across Victor's face that was so intensely murderous Reed actually leaned back a little, shoulders pressing into the door.

At which point Victor shoved him up against it, hard, and kissed him on the mouth, even harder.

Huh.

Well.

Um?

Reed liked to pride himself on his ability to assimilate new information quickly, but even he had to admit that this one took him a moment. "Mmph?" he contributed. Victor growled impatiently against his mouth and slammed him into the door again. Reed was distinctly conscious of the fact that they were both underdressed, only thin pyjama pants between them, Victor still shirtless.

And then, of course, there was the kissing. It was really rather hard to ignore the kissing. Victor, as it turned out, kissed like he did everything else: aggressively yet thoroughly, with an air of impatient annoyance that he was clearly the only one here who knew what he was doing. Reed had to admit he probably had a point in this instance, but still, he'd always believed in learning by experimentation, and he was fairly sure he'd grasped the principles...

It was oddly disappointing not to get much chance to put his theories in practice as they were interrupted by a shout.

"Hey! You kids! Don't you hear the damn alarm?" A pair of men dressed as fire marshals rounded the corner. "You want to get burned to a crisp?" the man in the lead demanded.

Victor pulled away from Reed and slipped back behind him, shoving him forward at the two men. Someone who had known Victor less than... oh, say fifteen seconds... might have assumed he was hiding from confrontation; Reed immediately knew that the only thing he could be hiding was whatever he was about to do to secure his room from intruders.

Another act of baseless paranoia in Reed's view, but he didn't want Victor to end up in further trouble, so he assessed their relative positions, stepped forward at the angle that would best shield Victor from view, and offered the two men a helpful smile. "Actually, statistically, over ninety-nine percent of campus fire alarms turn out to be-"

"Cute," the lead man said, with an expression that suggested he found their antics anything but. "How about you two take your teenage hormones outside? And don't come back in until you're told the building's clear!"

"Boss, we're running short on time," the second man said nervously, and the first gave him a quelling stare. Reed turned to look at Victor in time to see him stepping away from the door, an intriguing spark of some kind of energy just disappearing into the lock before it faded away.

There was no time to stop and analyse it. Victor swept past him and strode away towards the stairs, forcing Reed to scurry after him with a breathless smile of apology for the two fire marshals. The men stood glaring suspiciously after the two of them until the swing of the double doors hid them from sight.

"What did you do to the door?" he asked as they descended the staircase. Given their recent, um, proximity - he hoped Victor couldn't see him blushing - he was fairly sure there was nowhere Victor could be concealing any kind of technology about his person, and yet he'd definitely seen a spark of some kind of energy pass from Victor's fingers to the lock.

"Nothing your limited intellect could possibly hope to comprehend," Victor said as he marched on ahead and out through the fire exit at the bottom. Reed had to grab it fast as it swung back.

And then step back a second time to avoid crashing into Victor as he suddenly stopped and turned to confront him, folding his arms again. He really did have remarkably impressive musculature for someone with no apparent interest in joining in with any of the college's organised sports.

"Your performance back there was entirely pathetic," he said. Reed thought that was a little unfair considering Victor had taken him by surprise, but Victor kept going before he could voice the sentiment. "You are woefully ill-equipped for the art of subterfuge."

Ah. He rubbed the back of his neck. "Look, Victor, don't you think you're being a bit over the top?" he said. "Was all of that really necessary?" All right, Victor was working on some pretty far-out stuff, but the idea that government forces might be trying to steal his research was surely absurd.

Victor's eyes narrowed. "You flatter yourself, Richards, if you imagine I had some kind of ulterior motive," he said dangerously. "Or is this, perhaps, a case of wishful thinking?" He cocked his head with a cold smirk, clearly waiting for some kind of response, but Reed couldn't for the life of him imagine what it was meant to be.

"Um..." Being uncertain of his answers was an unfamiliar and rather uncomfortable space that Victor had a real knack for throwing him into. Reed was grateful for more than one reason when the fire alarm cut out, leaving ringing silence in its wake. "Oh, it's stopped," he said, which might, admittedly, be one of the least intelligent things he'd ever said.

Victor certainly seemed to be disgusted by the response, because he gave a barely-restrained snarl and wheeled round to stalk off without a further word. Reed frowned and rubbed his lips as he watched him go.

He was beginning to think he would never understand Victor von Doom.


End file.
